


Day One, Shaky Hands: Not Again

by LadyAnneNeville



Series: Whumptober 2019 [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Peter Parker, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Hurt Peter Parker, School Shootings, Shaky Hands, Shock, Violence against Children, Whumptober 2019, aftermath of school shooting, emotional hurt comfort, hurt comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 18:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21020501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAnneNeville/pseuds/LadyAnneNeville
Summary: Day One of Whumptober 2019. Some hurt/comfort. Peter has stopped a school shooting. This is what happens afterwards, how it affects him. Basically Peter gets looked after following a traumatic experience by Tony and Pepper.In terms of the school shooting, it is not a graphic account or a real time account, it is the aftermath and looking back. There is some discussion of the shooter's motive. If it is going to trigger you, please don't read this. Obviously I would love as many people as possible to read my story and leave comments, but look after yourselves first.





	Day One, Shaky Hands: Not Again

All the school shooting drills Peter had ever experienced had never adequately prepared him for this. The intrinsic wrongness of the entire situation. He had retreated to a dark corner of the hallway ceiling.

The assailant was lying webbed to the floor, arms outstretched. His three guns, military grade assault rifles and a pistol, all webbed, separately, to the floor out his reach and too gummed up to be used should any small hands get hold of them.

The perpetrator: not an outlier, not a tragic case suffering from mental health issues, not a senseless attack. He had come to New York all the way from Alabama. He had driven, so as to bring his guns into the city more easily. He was a white nationalist. He had come with one purpose in mind. He had come to murder black and immigrant children. He had targeted a kindergarten near queens. A kindergarten in a poor area, one which had less than 5% white American children. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Peter was angry. He was devastated. He was numb. Bodies. Children too young to be bodies. And not bodies. Injured. There were too many of them for him to stay and comfort. He couldn’t linger, couldn’t stop too see the dead, not and continue. He used his webbing to stop the bleeding of those still alive. He left words of comfort for them along with pleas to stay quiet. He did everything in his power and then retreated to a corner of the ceiling to wait.

Karen let the police outside know the scene was secured. They came in, and started cutting the webbing away from the assailant, who would still have been spitting racist, xenophobic bile had Peter not stopped his mouth with a well-placed web. He still tried the moment he saw the police. As soon as they saw the situation, they radioed paramedic colleagues, who rushed in to care for the dead and injured, and firefighters to help comfort those who were not hurt, and to keep them in their classrooms until the victims could be moved. 

A crime scene photographer started immediately photographing the scene.

“Peter.” Karen’s voice came through.

“Yes.” He replied, surprised by how hoarse his voice was.

“Mr Stark is waiting for you on the roof.”

“K” 

“Peter you need to go and meet him. There is a skylight five feet ahead of you. That is quickest route.” 

Peter started moving, slowly, consistently, dragging himself through the mud that was his mind. He made it through the skylight and stumbled towards Iron Man. Tony immediately grabbed him under his arms and took off. He didn’t let go until they had entered his New York penthouse. Pepper was there too. And Rhodey.

Tony stepped out of the armour and guided him towards the sofa. Pepper stepped forward and embraced him. 

“Your Aunt will be here in a couple of hours. We let her know you were safe.” Pepper was saying. Then Peter was sat on the sofa, without his mask. Tony was beside him, a grounding hand between his shoulder blades.

“Peter.” Peter’s head snapped up at his name. “Peter are you with us now?” It was Pepper again, crouched in front of him and looking straight at him. Tony’s hand had moved from his back and now both were gripping his shoulder’s, steadying him.

“You weren’t responding, Pete.” Tony said softly, somewhere near his ear. He couldn’t see his mentor’s face, and for once he was glad because he wasn’t sure he could face the worry he would be faced with in Tony’s eyes.

“I’m here.” Peter said. His voice sounding weak and small in his own ears, somehow, he felt very far away.

“Peter, honey, I’ve made you some hot chocolate. It’s sweet and warm and I think it will help you if you can drink it. Do you think you can hold the mug?” Pepper was speaking to him as if he were a small child, coaxing him gently. He felt a wave of shame and confusion at this.

“Why?” Was all he managed to get out.

“Your hands are shaking a bid there, bud.” Tony told him. Peter looked down to see his hands trembling like mad, still encased in his suit.

“Let me help you.” Pepper’s voice was warm and comforting. She took the warm mug, and carefully inserted it into his hands, her own, around the same size as his, bracing his hands and steadying them around the mug. She helped him guide the mug to his mouth for one sip, then again a few breaths later. By the third sip his hands were steady enough to hold the mug without spilling any of the hot chocolate on the expensive carpet. By the time he was half way through the drink, he could taste that this was the expensive kind of hot chocolate that Pepper preferred. The kind she had made him only once before as a special treat by melting high quality chocolate into milk on the stove top. By the end of the drink he felt like he was mostly back in the room.

He was now braced on the settee with Pepper sat on one side of him and Tony on the other. As wonderful as Pepper was, he couldn’t help but wish that it was May sat there. He knew her office was on the other side of the city. He knew it would take her time to get her, even with Happy collecting her, because it was rush hour in New York.

“I know you don’t want to hear, this, but we need to debrief.” Tony’s baritone voice was carefully measured, uncharacteristically cautious.

“What?” Peter was shaken, the last thing he wanted to do now was debrief.

“Peter, this isn’t for my benefit. I saw your actions as you took them via Friday. You did well out there. You did so well, and I am so incredibly proud of you. But the situation you took care of today, it was dark. It was darker than most things you might encounter in this job, and you need to talk through it and tell someone. Any of the Avengers would be struggling if they had gone through what you had gone through today.”

“Do we need to do it now?”

“Soon.”

“When?”

“I think it would be best before you Aunt gets here. I know how you like to shield her as much as possible from what you do and I don’t think you will be as open as you need to be if she’s here too. But I think you need to take a shower, and get into some fresh clothes first. Get out of your suit, take some time, and come back ready to start sharing. Come on, you can use the guest suite.”  
Peter allowed Tony to guide him to the guest bathroom, show him clean towels and toiletries, and tell him that he would leave some clothes on the guest bed for him when he was ready.

He thinks he cried in the shower. He isn’t sure. He isn’t really sure of many things right now. He has somehow turned incompetent. He eventually remembers to wash his hair, to apply soap to his body, to do anything more than stand still in the hot spray of the sophisticated shower.

Some indeterminate amount of time later he is lying on the guest bed, in a borrowed AC/DC t-shirt and sweatpants, with his head on Tony’s stomach, his mentor gently carding a hand through his hair, telling his mentor what happened. Debriefing.

“Part of me thought I knew what I was walking into, I mean we do school shooting drills at Midtown. I was so wrong. This guy, he was methodical. He knew exactly what he was trying to do, and he was relying on police protocol to wait until they fully understood the situation, in the hope that he would have time to do it. It was senseless and it wasn’t. Like his reasoning didn’t make sense but he did have reasoning. He was a terrorist, a white nationalist American who thought other races didn’t deserve to be American. He wanted to prove it so he chooses to target a kindergarten in New York which he identified as one of the worst places in America because of the melting pot of culture. He was basically a Nazi, murdering children for no other reason than their country of origin and the colour of their skin.

“And the very worst part. When Karen told me there was a school shooting and said which school it was, I was initially relieved because it wasn’t the kindergarten less than a block away where Ned was due to pick up his little sister. How sick is that. How sick am I that I was relieved because I didn’t know the victims? As though each and every one of the children didn’t have friends and families who loved them. As though the grief of all those parents who have lost children is irrelevant.” Peter felt tears come into his eyes again and choked up.

“Peter, your reaction, your relief that it wasn’t someone you knew is perfectly natural. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about the victims, if anything you care too much about them. Nothing can prepare you for a situation like this. I was in Chicago when I got the call, I came back as fast as I could. I wanted to spare you this. But I was too late. By the time I had arrived you had already apprehended the gunman and the police had entered the building. You handled the situation quickly, and with less bloodshed than the police would have managed. There were eight classrooms in that school, all full. He had already gone through two of them. There were 180 children and nearly 20 teachers in the rest of the school that he didn’t get too because you stopped him. Of the children who were injured but not yet killed, ten survived to make it to the hospital and will most likely live. Had the police entered the building, the gunman would almost certainly have been killed, and he would most likely have injured or killed as least some of the police officers as well. You saved a lot of lives today.”

Hot tears ran down Peter’s face.

“How many died?” He asked.

“Too many.” Tony responded.

“That’s not a real answer. It’s always ‘too many’, whenever anyone is killed. If you don’t tell me I’ll just find out from the news later.”

“42, but it will probably be 43 by the morning.” 

A sob wrenched its way up through his throat and he buried his face in Tony’s shoulder, the engineer’s strong arms wrapping around him in a strong embrace. They were quiet for a long time.

Sometimes, in response to atrocity, there is no response but tears.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of my whumptober collection. I don't know if I will do every prompt but I am hoping to complete at least ten of them. The majority will be focusing on IronDad, but there may be a couple that focus on Natasha as well. If you are interested, please subscribe to the series as I will be publishing them as one shots so people can pick and choose the ones they are interested in. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!


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